1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention described herein pertain to the field of computer systems. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, one or more embodiments of the invention relate to on-demand indexing in a data management system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Master data systems simplify maintenance and promote data integrity by simplifying the user's view of the data and its repository. For example, SAP's Master Data Management Environment (MDME) system is an integrated system for master data management that uses a SQL (Structured Query Language) DBMS, but does not require designers to use SQL for searching, sorting, and retrieving of information. A standard SQL DBMS does not support the types of advanced structures necessary for managing databases of master data. Generally speaking master data systems consist of a thick shell of functionality on top of a SQL-based DBMS to provide a scalable database where data is fully accessible to other SQL-based applications and tools.
A database index can improve the speed of database operations on a table, such as record access and search. Database indexes can be used to increase the efficiency of a master data system. Database systems require many indexes in order to efficiently search, but often many of the indexes which are calculated and loaded into memory are not utilized. Database indexes typically require less disk space than the indexed data, but become larger as the number of records is increased. Furthermore, as the number of records is increased, building indexes becomes computationally intensive and thus, the system is slowed down during load time.
There are currently no known systems that provide on demand indexing that initially loads a subset of indexes and calculates other indexes when a task is initiated that requires those indexes.
For at least the limitations described above there is a need for a system that initially loads a subset of indexes and calculates other indexes when a task is initiated that requires those indexes.